The New York Times has an adaptation of “Life, Animated” by Ron Suskind. The book will be published April 1 by Kingswell, an imprint of Disney Book Group. It tells the story of Ron’s son Owen who at the age of three is diagnosed with regressive autism. Through the storytelling of Disney, Owen is able to make progress both academically and socially. He uses the stories and characters of Disney to learn lessons that many thought he was incapable of learning. The author, Ron Susking, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of four books about presidential power. He is currently the senior fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.
Here is the description of the book from Amazon: Imagine being trapped inside a Disney movie and having to learn about life mostly from animated characters dancing across a screen of color. A fantasy? A nightmare? This is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn’t speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies, turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, brotherhood.The family was forced to become animated characters, communicating with him in Disney dialogue and song; until they all emerge, together, revealing how, in darkness, we all literally need stories to survive.